


you've begun to feel like home

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: (even if i could) make a deal with god [your blue-eyed boys related short-fic] [66]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: C-PTSD, Disabled Character, M/M, Mentally Ill Character, Midnight Reflections, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Touching, Watching Someone Sleep, recovery is a spiral
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2015-02-22
Packaged: 2018-03-14 12:37:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3410918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can get dangerously close to thinking the good moments aren't worth it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you've begun to feel like home

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of [**this series**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/132585), which is for short-fic associated with my fic [**your blue-eyed boys**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/107477), because I needed somewhere to stash it. 
> 
> This is a direct coda to ["my end and my beginning"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2739575)

You can get dangerously close to thinking the good moments aren't worth it. 

It's an idea that rattles and hisses around the edge of Bucky's thoughts for most of the afternoon and early evening. He gets distracted, it gets dispelled over and over, and then it creeps back like fog. Like smoke. Like infection. 

He doesn't pay much attention to it. Doesn't have the space. And the reason he doesn't have the space is the same reason that thought is there at all, because he feels like he's walking a fucking tightrope, keeping himself in the space where he can hang onto that sense of _good_ , the thing that might edge its way to comfort, contentment. Except he can walk a fucking tightrope, a literal one, way more easily than this. 

So much shit, so many corners: no don't think that don't think this, don't focus on that feeling, don't let that memory shape itself - and if you clutch at anything it's over, you've lost and it's so much fucking work that thinking about the work is another thing he _can't let himself do_ and then if you're not careful you'll realize that you're working flat out to stay in a space other people don't even notice they get to fucking _live in_ and it's so fucking funny you could shoot yourself. 

Don't think about pink elephants. Especially don't think about the pink elephants that are crushing you right now. 

He manages it, just. Ignores that last fucking poison of a thought, the wondering if these moments _are_ worth it. Manages it, manages food, even manages an opinion on what to watch, settling on one of the various assortment of shows Mike Holmes does, because Steve finds the arc of disaster to repair soothing and Bucky generally finds watching Holmes bitch about other people's incompetence is hilarious. 

Manages to keep his mind on that and on Steve's fingers against his scalp and absently stroking his neck, like touching him's something Steve wants to do enough that it's stopping he has to think about. On that and the little cat-body curled up by his hip when she worms her way in, a little disc of fur and heat. He manages it, and it's probably a fucking miracle, and the little pit of knowing it can't last is barely a point of acid at the pit of his stomach. 

When he wakes up it's dark, they're still on the futon and he's miraculously _not_ cold, but his bladder's telling him that if he thinks he's getting any more sleep without emptying it he's fucking insane. 

They must've both fallen asleep more or less at once, or Steve would've woke him up and put them both to bed by dark at least; sleep hasn't been _bad_ lately, so Steve's not acting like every time Bucky drifts off is like a fragile plant in a frost, something he has to fuss around and shield from the slightest disturbance. And Steve's arm must be completely fucking numb, because of how it'd been stuck under Bucky for - his eyes flick to the digital time display on the cable box - seven hours, but that's exactly the kind of thing Steve'll sleep through. 

Pushing himself up accidentally dumps the idiot kitten on the floor, which she protests, but she'd've probably woken up and trotted after him to the bathroom anyway. Her opinion on the subject of him getting up and wandering around at night is almost worse than Steve's. When he goes back to the living-room he scoops her up with his left hand, absently, and she settles her chin on his curled fingers and her legs on either side of his palm and wrist and purrs her fool head off, totally secure. 

Must be nice. 

He sits on the futon instead of standing mostly because while he'll sleep through both a completely numb arm and the pins and needles of it waking up, Steve's still got himself set to wake up if Bucky's not beside him for more than about ten minutes. Bucky's always envied Steve that stupid damn little trick: it took him _weeks_ of nervous, paranoid half-sleep before his ears picked out the scraping wheeze of an asthma attack even when he was off in Dreamland, but Steve's always been able to just decide what was gonna wake him up and more or less what wasn't. Bucky's always envied it and never said shit, because he used to figure Steve deserved at least one way the special quirks his body and nerves threw at him counted in the black instead of the red. 

Now it's sleeping through other things that Bucky envies, sometimes. But he tries not to think about that, either. Envy of anyone doesn't go good places. 

Steve's slept the same his whole life, in the narrow bed with its broken mattress or on the floor with the couch-cushions or in a foxhole in the snow or now: deeply, relaxed unless he's in pain, and with the one line on his forehead, the first shadow of a frown that means concentration and thought more than unhappiness - like somewhere in his sleep Steve's solving a puzzle or making a plan that needs all his thought. 

With his right forefinger, Bucky traces it, knows it won't wake Steve up. Lets his fingers move to the marks on Steve's jaw, his throat, disappearing under the neckline of the shirt he fell asleep in. Steve's skin is warm, head turned just a little to the side, eyes more or less still under closed, softened eyelids. Deep sleep; not dreaming. Not now. 

And more or less unwillingly, Bucky wonders if Steve knows how close they came to an edge where falling would have been . . . bad. Hopes Steve doesn't, doesn't ever have to. It's numbed on the other side of relief, now, but Bucky pushes it away anyway. Doesn't want to think about it, doesn't _want_ to examine memory to try and guess whether it was luck or if Steve saw, if he was going to say something else, if Bucky just basically demanded the fucking impossible. Again. 

If Steve just threw himself into it, again, anyway. 

There are times, have been times, that he's wondered if that kid in that alley mightn't've been better off getting a black eye and a bloody nose (another black eye and bloody nose) and skipping all of this. 

A lot more times he's thought about just how many fucking years he's been spending part of the night watching Steve sleep. Knowing _he_ wouldn't've been better off. 

(And there's a quiet bit of him, barely audible over the rest, that tells him he's being a fucking idiot.) 

But the thing about Steve is Steve's a terrible fucking liar. Always has been. He can _hide_ things like a fucking champion, dance around them, but stick him where he has to flat out lie and it's like his soul can't even take it or something, and he's even worse at it with Bucky than with other people. Which means he doesn't think if that stupid kid in that fucking alley would've been better off and maybe that's what matters. 

Or maybe nothing does. 

He thinks about waking Steve up, actually going to bed. Doesn't really have a _reason_ why he decides not to, lies back down where he was instead. And if Steve doesn't wake up - and he doesn't - he still moves in his sleep, arm curling around Bucky's ribcage, head turning towards him. The kitten settles herself on the far side of Bucky's shoulder and neck, and Bucky rests his right arm across Steve's waist, first, and then - looking at the rest of the inside of his head and deciding it didn't have any single fucking thing he wanted to think about, any thoughts he wanted to hear - shifting so his palm rests on Steve's chest instead. Counts breaths and heart-beats instead, a pair of mismatched rhythms hissing _shut up_ at everything that wants to drown him. 

It can fucking wait. It's not like he, or it, isn't going to be here tomorrow.


End file.
